5. PerfektStorm
PerfektStorm
Playlist: The Chase - Emmit Fenn
Kael
The whole scene becomes bitter like a dry pill on my tongue.
Alarms and notices are running across my DataLINK.
All the triggers I’ve put into the system to let me know when there’s a glitch or an anomaly are screaming across the screen.
I’ve never seen the level of commotion that’s unfolding around me on the monitors that hang from the neon-veined walls.
I ignore it all...can’t take my eyes off her...
can’t stop looking at the beautiful wet mess that just walked through the front door of this shithole.
I glance toward the stage where Ash laughs and approaches her with that charismatic bedlam he gets when a woman has piqued his interest. Ash looks alive, challenged, intrigued, in a way I can’t remember feeling in...what? Forever?
It’s been years. Too many years. I don’t even remember the last time I was interested in someone, let alone let someone get close.
Work...I tell myself...it’s the work. The long nights buried in data, the endless meetings with suits who think they own the city.
Another lie I like to tell myself so I can keep walking into the corporate towers without choking on my guilt.
There’s no room for anyone else to swim when you’re already drowning.
I take another drink and allow myself to take all of her in.
She’s tall, tall enough to match my presence without overshadowing me, yet perfectly curvy.
Underneath her leather jacket and pants, she’s athletic but feminine, the kind of strength that comes from surviving, not gym aesthetics.
I admire that she doesn’t try to blend in.
Exactly the type of woman strong enough to make a man like me want to do better.
She’s the whole package: high cheekbones, sharp jaw, full pink lips, a gaze that could slice through any man’s lies.
Unfortunately at the moment she’s using those vivid golden eyes to undress my best friend.
Ash approaches her easily. He spills his charmed words, as she tosses her hair over her shoulder, coyly.
Long dark hair with strands of deep electric pink and bright gold, like neon sunlight catching fire.
What I wouldn’t give to run my fingers through it, give it a gentle tug opening her neck to me...
No, Kael. I quickly snap myself back into the real digital world. Of course she would like Ash, they all do. It’s better this way, I remind myself for the ten thousandth time.
No one to see how far I’ve fallen.
You can’t lose what you never let yourself have.
The mantras don’t comfort me. Not really.
But it’s enough repetition to keep me sitting here, alone, as Ash settles back down beside me.
He’s still grinning from talking to that perfect storm.
I let out a breath, slow and controlled.
She knows I’m staring, but I can’t help myself.
Perfect storm. Yeah. That’s exactly what she is.
And I can’t shake it. The pull. The fascination. The way her presence hums in my veins like electricity; it should terrify me. It should make me want to hit the kill switch to shut it down.
Instead, all I want is to know more.
I drag a hand across my jaw, trying to smother the thought, but it doesn’t fade.
It sharpens. She looks right at me hiding in the shadows, and when our eyes meet briefly it’s like the whole room tilts.
Dangerous, magnetic, pulling my coldness into her heat.
Her gaze hooks me, drags me closer even though she doesn’t move. Doesn’t have to.
Something in her, wild and unbroken, reaches straight through the air and takes hold in my chest.
And damn it...I still can’t look away.
“Met someone tonight. Name’s Lyra. She’s got fire in her veins, Kael. The whole club felt it.” He motions for the server to come over.
I don’t look away, I just continue to watch her from the dim corner. The way she moves like she doesn’t belong to this place, or this city. I feel my hand tighten around my glass and my pants tighten around my stiffening cock.
She hugs a younger guy, tousles his hair, plants a kiss on his cheek. Really? One of those nerdy-brainy-glasses types?
Lucky bastard.
“She’s trouble.” I readjust in my seat, trying to convince myself as much as Ash. I say nothing else, but jealousy fills me, raw and unspoken.
“Probably...but we like trouble.” Ash lifts his brows a couple of times. “You like trouble.”
My jaw sets as I try to shut out the memories of Ash and I running through the streets after girls in the wee hours of the neon-lit dawn after drinking and stealing. “I don’t have time for...distractions.”
Ash studies me, half-smirk, knowing from that power of his that I remember just how much I do like trouble. “Funny. Destiny doesn’t care about your schedule, brother.” He smacks me on the back and stands.
“Sorry, bro, but I don’t think you’re in the greatest position to tell me how to manage this mess that’s my life.
You’re straddling the line between loyalty and the rebellion, and your bridges are about to burn.
” I lean further back into my familiar shadows, looking through my glass at him like it owes me answers.
“Hope she’s not the one holding the match. ”
“Maybe...but I’m someone who sees the way the world bends when certain people walk in”—he glances between Lyra and myself—“and you’re about to collide with someone who’ll change everything for you.”
I glance down at the lines of code still filling my DataLINK. What the hell could be going on this late at night? I curse.
Ember, my assistant, is in the lab tonight. She’s got this. I can’t take care of everything. Besides, I want to be stupidly drunk by midnight and in a RedRoom in DreamNet by curfew. I guzzle the last of my liquid courage and pull down my hood emerging like a butterfly from a cocoon.
The music shifts. The DJ’s tribal beat thumping lower now, the bass pounding like a pulse through the floorboards.
Ash went gods know where with gods know who, so this is my chance.
My feet are like lead. I feel like gravity works differently for me at this moment, slower, heavier.
A conversation won’t hurt, nothing more, I tell myself.
She leans casually on the bar, raindrops still clinging to her leather-clad shoulders. I stop just short of her and lock eyes again, my dark smothering her light. She looks at me like she’s caught in crosshairs.
Screens behind her glitch red, then violet, then a flicker of code streams like water running backward. This must be the universe calling me into her orbit.
Strange symbols flicker across every wall screen behind her head, jagged and bleeding. Images pop behind her, and in between I notice flashes of words, blurry and shaking.
THE WORLD IS A CAGE
WE ARE CAGED BIRDS BEATING OUR WINGS AGAINST ITS BARS
ONE DAY THE BARS WILL brEAK
Perplexing. I slant my head as if trying to decipher a foreign language or a coded virus. Must be an anomaly in the area. For once, I couldn’t care less.
The crowd roars, and I look away to see what the commotion is but quickly look back to make sure she hasn’t disappeared, a mere figment of my imagination.
“Sorry about Ash...he can be a bit much at first.” I flash an actual-fucking-smile and it feels so foreign to me I almost melt into the floor. “You’re new here?”
She forces herself to break the spell between us and faces the bartender.
“Sort of. I’m just in a lot of places I shouldn’t be.
” She turns back with drink in hand and almost spills the contents down the front of my hoodie, because now, she too can’t look away.
She finally breaks our gaze, her eyes shifting up to the screens above her head.
She blushes nervously. Unease fills the room between us like fog.
“Lyra, right? Ash told me.” I try to coax her into engaging.
Please, please don’t let her recognize me.
“That’s right.” She half-smirks, her vibrant eyes traveling up and down, scanning me. “And you are?”
Now we’re getting somewhere.
I set my glass down next to her, the faint clink swallowed by the music. “Just call me Kael.” I move in a bit closer, inhaling her scent: salt air, warm golden breezes, and something so satisfyingly sweet I can’t bring it to the top of my mind. But I want it...to taste it.
We stand there in the blue-pink glow for a beat too long. I notice the screens above her shift again. This time bursting into strange, wild colors and pictures: a dragon breathing fire soaring through static snow, the sun cracking open into intense light over a purple ocean. Lyra tenses.
She whispers softly to herself, a tinge of nervousness “Calm. I know this...” She begins counting backward.
So strange but so intriguing. It’s almost like being around all this tech is making her nervous. Perhaps she’s one of those hackers Ash raves about.
I glance up, then back at her to find myself drowning in the molten pool of her eyes. “Know this...know what?” I question her.
“The feeling right before something changes or shifts...significantly. It’s just a thing I do to calm myself.” She’s filled with worry now, the light in her eyes beginning to dim.
Ash suddenly reappears over my shoulder, lightening the moment instantly. “Hey, Kael, making new friends?”
Dickhead.
I shoot him a look, sharp enough to cut glass.
“Kael doesn’t smile much, never has, but there’s something in the way he’s looking at you that tells me there just might be hope for him yet!” He smirks and leans in toward her. Too close.
“Called it.” He mouths the words silently behind her head. He can feel it, not with his eyes, but with that strange undercurrent that’s always humming in him when the music gets loud enough. Like Lyra is a guitar string strung tight through my entire body, and I just want her to pluck it.
Lyra glances up at Ash, then back at me, brow furrowing like she can feel the tension thrumming between the three of us. Ash’s grin widens. He knows. He always knows how to get under my skin, and I hate him for it.
She shakes her head “Yeah, this is definitely one of those vibes I get right before everything crashes and burns.” The words hang between us, charged. “You guys are trouble.” Her smile returns, breaking the ice in my veins.
I don’t believe in destiny, and I don’t believe it’s magic, especially since I’m one of the unlucky ones that doesn’t hold a drop after StarFell.
It feels pre-programmed, like an unalterable outcome, a sense of being on rails, unable to disconnect.
Not because of some grand cosmic plan, but probably because the megacorporations, or some advanced technology have already written our story.
The nerdy guy waves her over and damn it if she doesn’t go running to him. A look over her shoulder, a flip of that dark hair, and I feel myself starting to come undone. “See you soon?”
“Yeah...you could say that.” She’ll probably see me all over the feeds and then it will be done. I nod. Is there such a thing as love at first sight? Lust maybe, especially in a cold corporate world built on lies. I’ve never believed in that kind of foolishness, until now.
One look and she rewrites me. I can’t stop replaying it, can’t stop dissecting the way her eyes call to me. She shouldn’t affect me like this, I just met her.
And yet...she does.
It’s irrational. Dangerous. I know it. I need to stop this before it starts, but obsession doesn’t ask permission. It roots itself deep and fast, before you even realize you’re already lost.
And I fear, despite my affirmations about remaining alone, I’m already lost.
“Good.” She lets the word drip like honey. “Come find me sometime.”
She lifts her wrist, wiggling the DreamNet band. The gesture is playful, but the look in her eyes is a dare to come find her in her dreams.
A challenge.
An invitation she has no idea the weight of.
Come find you? I laugh to myself. I built the place she dreams in. She doesn’t even realize she’s inviting the architect into his own house.
The bright spotlight shines across her cheekbones as she tilts her head, eyes locking on mine like she’s trying to read my secrets. She thinks she’s flirting, teasing me with a little digital chase.
She has no idea what kind of man she just offered herself to, doesn’t know the half of it.
DreamNet was my creation long before the Corporation slapped their logo on it. If I come looking for her there, I will find her. I know every door, every inch of that program.
A slow, involuntary smile curls at the corner of my mouth. Odd. The second one tonight. Something dark and possessive stirs in my chest, something reckless, just like in my youth. It ignites a spark I haven’t felt in years.
“You’d better be careful asking me to chase you,” I whisper, stepping just a bit closer, letting her see the heat she’s ignited in my eyes. “If I come looking for you...I won’t stop until I find you...and I will find you.”
Her eyes light up, bright and electric, and she doesn’t even try to hide it. “Again, good,” she adds.
But the way she says it makes me wonder if I’m wrong about her...and destiny.